a little bit 18th century, a little bit 24th century

Category Archives: Quotes

I am a multi race annoyance, looking past color, creed, or gender to bug the hell out of any person or creature I deem worthy of aggravating, or if I’m just bored and want to get on with killing Siths already. — here (OMG! Seriously?)

There seems to be a confusion here about what women want, along with more than a touch of the old maxim about designing for The Ladies — shrink it and pink it. — there

But some folks don’t listen to naysayers -they just keep at it until they get a chance to show their stuff. — here

This is municipal lip service of the most collagen-injected kind paid to idealistic notions of contemporary urban living. — there

As I’ve said or intimated more than once in these scribblings, my mind knows more than I do. I should pay deeper attention to myself. — here

“Until we can get out of this ‘me’ culture of ‘my wants, my desires come before everything else,’ I think we’re going to have clashes like this,” — here

It turns out that there is no correlation between homework and achievement. According to a 2005 study by the Penn State professors Gerald K. LeTendre and David P. Baker, some of the countries that score higher than the U.S. on testing in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study—Japan and Denmark, for example—give less homework, while some of those scoring lower, including Thailand and Greece, assign more. Why pile on the homework if it doesn’t make even a testable difference, and in fact may be harmful? — there

Superman isn’t good or special because he’s an alien who crashes on Earth and ends up being incredibly powerful. He’s special because after all that he becomes someone who always does the right thing because he was raised by a couple of decent people from Kansas. — here

We live strung between either the naïve fantasy of pure choice or the absurd determinism of none. — there (This is long and I have only read about half of it so far.)

“Not everything has to be useful because some things are allowed to just make me happy too.” — here

I figured if they were going to judge my skin, I might as well adorn it appropriately. Give them some color atop my offending color. — here

First, it’s true that the issue is complicated. But the deeper you dig, the more fraud you find in the case against GMOs. It’s full of errors, fallacies, misconceptions, misrepresentations, and lies. The people who tell you that Monsanto is hiding the truth are themselves hiding evidence that their own allegations about GMOs are false. — there

…“flavorful,” that popular foodie term, does not, I believe, necessarily imply that the flavor in question is at all desirable. — here

…we like to buy from producers who offer sermons with which that we want to identify, even when the connections between product and sermon are very weak. — there

This is kind of why I hate having the reputation for being responsible – you drop one ball of the fifteen you’re juggling and everyone points and screams about it, never observing that you’re managing to juggle FOURTEEN FLIPPING TENNIS BALLS. — here

Then they snuck their piece into the display area of the exhibit. Its presence raised no eyebrows. In fact, it was promptly awarded a ribbon for merit. — there

It is mildly unnerving to reflect that the whole of meaningful human history – the development of farming, the creation of towns, the rise of mathematics and writing and science and all the rest – has taken place within an atypical patch of fair weather.

“What’s true for you may not be true for me” is an out-and-out lie. Actual truth is, and can only be, absolute. It is measured against fact, against reality. If it can’t be so measured, then it’s not a case of being true or false – it’s a matter of opinion. — here

I like men, and if they were sexist, I knew a good joke or teasing would change their mind. Feminists just faint and quit, or maybe faint and sue you for harassment. Poor things: acting like Victorian woman who faint at the sight of table legs. — there

Why must the “word problems” we give our children to solve be boring? Let the problems capture the imagination, and then math homework will be a joy. — here

Clothes now have so many labels that a pair of jeans can come with 700 words attached. — there (Labels: another good reason to sew your own clothes)

I really fraking hate upgrades! Yesterday I got a notice on my phone that an upgrade needed my approval. It was from AT&T so I figured it was something I needed to do and usually it’s no big deal; nothing changes that I notice. But this time it changed practically everything. Most annoyingly, how to mute the phone or put it on vibrate. Before, I simply held in the right button and a menu popped up that had the options, Power Off, Restart, Airplane Mode, Vibrate, and Mute. Now it just has Power off, Restart, Airplane mode, and Emergency Mode. What the hell is “Emergency Mode”? And where are the rest of the options? I know there must be some way to at least put the phone on vibrate but I have no idea how. Now my only option when I need for it to not make noise is to turn it off completely and that is not acceptable. I am going to look at the AT&T website and see if I can figure it out but this really pisses me off. It should be obvious, or at least easy to figure out own your own.

UPDATE: Okay, I got it. You have to use the volume button. Just turn down the volume down all the way, which makes sense but it’s more “work” and more annoying than the old way.

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Did I already mention this? It’s still in my bookmarks. Wearing a Suit Changes the Way Your Brain Works. People who resist dressing up for anything need to know this. I don’t know… Maybe it wouldn’t make any difference to someone like that. Probably they would see it as another reason to not dress up. I mean, who wants to feel more confident and powerful, right? It’s not all good though. Wearing a suit supposedly also makes you less detail oriented, which would explain a lot about what goes on in the corporate world.

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Did you know that there is an Eat What You Want Day? It was yesterday. I missed it but that’s okay. I pretty much ate what I wanted this past weekend. And the weekend before that. What I really need is a Stop Eating Everything in Sight You Crazy Fool Day. Oh. I guess that should be every day. Seriously, I did really good yesterday and I didn’t even feel especially hungry. I’m planning a really light-eating week and a hopefully not too crazy weekend.

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I am really happy that we have been getting so much rain lately. We need it. But, at the same time, I’m really getting tired of it. It’s been raining almost every day and when it’s not raining it’s still unseasonably cool. Yesterday was sunny but it barely made it up to 70° F. Today is supposed to be the same and tomorrow the rain returns. I’m trying not to be too down about it because rain is good but I am very impatient for warmer weather.

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Last week I found something for a “Thought for the Week” but then I forgot to post it yesterday like I intended so here it is:

“The beautiful thing about learning is that nobody can take it away from you.” — B.B. King

Today is Mr. Orson Welles’ hundredth birthday, and you really ought to celebrate by watching Citizen Kane, or by hiding in the basement from Martian invaders—whichever is more appealing to you. — here (That was May 6th)

And a little piece of me whimpered and died inside, and I crawled off the the bathroom to weep and lick my wounds, and to despair of the world yet to come. — there (Probably NSFW)

But it’s nice in life to have something you do just for you. Where you are the only person who has to look at it and decide if it’s good or bad. — here

And realistically, one should not expect a warrior woman to be a waif. — there

In celebration of the date on which Winston Churchill was granted honorary US citizenship, Hillsdale College, custodian of the Churchill Project, is offering the biography deal of the year – perhaps of the decade. — here

AS A CHILD I knew exactly what was most desirable: pinkness and sparkle. When I was grown-up I was going to sweep down a flight of stairs into a great ballroom wearing a pink satin dress with a huge skirt: yards and yards of the shiniest pink satin, because obviously if something was desirable you couldn’t have too much of it. — there

I started to include this in my usual Quotes post but I decided that the part I want to quote is rather long for that so here it is, all by itself. From this Interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Now, where the rubber hits the road is, since we are a free country where belief systems are constitutionally protected — provided they don’t infringe on the rights of others — then how do you have governance over “all” when you have belief systems for the “some”? It seems to me that the way you govern people is you base governance on things that are objectively true; that are true regardless of your belief system, or no matter what the tenets are of your holy documents. And then they should base it on objective truths that apply to everyone. So the issue comes about not that there are religious people in the world that have one view over another, it’s if you have one view or another based on faith and you want to legislate that in a way that affects everyone. That’s no longer a free democracy. That’s a country where the few who have a belief system that’s not based in objective reality want to control the behavior of everyone else.

Hominids didn’t spread first across Africa, and then the entire globe, by utilizing just one foraging strategy or sticking to a precise mix of carbohydrates, proteins and fats. We did it by being ever so flexible, both socially and ecologically, and always searching for the greener grass (metaphorically), or riper fruit (literally). — there

So I threw caution to the winds, ill-blown as they were, and leaned over the counter until I was nearly nose-to-nose with Monkeywoman and discovered she hadn’t brushed her teeth since 1983 and mainly ate possum assholes for breakfast. — here

…but by the 5th winter weather advisory, my creativity was on the couch watching Netflix. — there

“I am dismayed at our seismic people about this issue and believe they couldn’t track a bunny through fresh snow!” — here

But when talking to voters, the GOP really can’t afford to tone it down, because while monied elites tend to be secular, selling free-market pillage to the people getting robbed is not a very effective strategy. — there

Meanwhile, in a computer graveyard somewhere, the plastic remains of abandoned broadband modem are slowly strangled by creeping ivy, their cases mottled with a lark and heron droppings. A newt passes by in the dark and chuckles to itself. — here

I’m not sure that most people even see the sky at all, day to day. — there